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THE  BUSY  MAN'S  BIBLE. 


t^  Q0uep  (man'0  (gm 


AND 


How  to  Study  and  Teach  It 


BY 
GEORGE  W.  CABLE 


MEADVIXXK  PENNA. 

FLOOD    &   VINCENT 

8^t  dbamtampra-Cmtnig  ^rtsa 
1891 


Copyright,  1881, 

By  FliOOD  A  ViNCKNT. 


IJie  ChatUatiQua-OerUury  Press,  Meadville,  Pa.,  U.S.  A. 
Eleotavtyped,    Printed   and    Bound    by  Flood  A  Vincent. 


CONTENTS. 


PAOE. 

L    Wht  Study  It? 7 

TL    How  TO  Begin 12 

III.    How  TO  Study           19 

rV.    Brains  are  Better  than  Books  .        .  24 

V.    Cogitation  First — Commentators  Last  .  29 

VL    Compare  Watches 36 

VII.    The   Right  Spirit  is   Nine-Tenths  of 

THE  Right  Method 41 

VIII.    Lappping  as  a  Dog  Lappeth  ...  47 
IX.    Prove  the  Book  by  Truth,  Not  Truth 

BY  the  Book 53 

X.    Teach  the  Christ-Life     ....  64 

XI.    Don't  Discourse — and  Don't  Dogmatize  63 

XII.    Study  the  Pupil 66 

XIII.  Simplify 68 

XIV.  The  Pupil's  Own  Sake         ....  71 
XV.    The  Living  Epistle 73 


THE  BUSY  MAN'S  BIBLE. 
I. 

WHY  STUDY  IT? 

THE  very  essence  of  Christ's  teaching  is 
that  religion  is  not  a  mere  province  of 
life,  but  the  whole  empire  of  life  both  in  the  in- 
dividual and  throughout  human  society.  Every- 
thing that  is  right  at  all  is,  ia  so  for,  *'  good  re- 
ligion," and  nothing  is  entirely  right  until  it  is 
"  good  religion."  Eeligion  is  not  to  be  grouped 
with,  but  comprises  and  appropriates,  science, 
art,  literature,  commerce,  handicraft,  unskilled 
labor,  sleep,  recreative  pleasures,  and  the  fur- 
nishing of  recreative  pleasures.  AH  these,  be 
they  essentials  or  only  aids  to  life's  fallest  de- 
velopment, are  but  parts  and  phases  of  religion. 
Not  merely  must  these  things  be  done  consistent- 


8  THE  BUST  MAN'S  BIBLE. 

ly  with  religion,  and  go  side  by  side  "witii  a 
spirit  of  piety;  nor  are  they  merely  among  the 
things  to  be  sanctified  and  saved;  they  are  them- 
selves parts  of  the  work  of  saving  the  world. 

Eeligion  cannot  be  fairly  called  the  doing  of 
right  things  with  right  ends  in  view,  unless  it 
includes  the  great  ultimate  right  end  within  its 
view  and  intention.  And  therefore  to  say  we 
have  no  time  to  attend  to  "  matters  of  religion  " 
is  to  say  we  have  no  time  to  do  anything  in  the 
right  way.  Eeligion  is  for  men, — for  busy  men, 
for  men  busy  in  the  affairs  of  the  world,  for  men 
whose  religious  duty  is  to  raise  crops  and  herds, 
dig  metals  and  minerals,  make  goods,  sail  ships» 
sell  merchandise,  write,  edit,  hold  office,  mold 
bricks,  carry  hods,  sing,  paint,  and  all  the  rest. 

But  religion  is  not  all  work  any  more  than 
life  is.  It  is  "  whatsoever  we  do."  Eating  and 
sleeping  are  among  its  duties;  worship  is  among 
them  in  exactly  the  same  way,  for  nourishment 
and  refreshment.  To  work  well  one  must  eat 
and  sleep;  to  eat  and  sleep  well,  one  must  work. 
Worship  without  work,  work  without  worship, 
— either  one  will  produce  but  a  starved  religion. 


TEE  BUST  MAN'S  BIBLE.  9 

So,  then,  worship  is  for  all,  but  especially  for 
biisy  men.  Hard  fighters  in  the  battle  of  life 
need  the  most  and  most  nutritions  food,  both 
material  and  spiritual. 

Now,  many  men  have  such  a  passion  for  the 
activities  of  life  that  they  lose  the  fe,culty  of  rest 
and  refreshment,  and  turn  everything  into  work. 
Some  sleep,  but  do  not  restj  some  eat,  but  do 
not  digest;  and  some  worship,  but  get  no  Spirit- 
ual nourishment,  because  their  appetite  craves 
and  is  satisfied  with  only  the  working  parts  and 
working  phases  of  worship.  Even  if  the  activi- 
ties they  embrace  are  mental  and  studious,  they 
only  distend  themselves  with  learning,  though  it 
may  be  in  spiritual  matters;  and  if  their  tastes 
are  rather  for  administrative  or  executive  affairs, 
you  will  find  them  "active  and  prominent  in  all 
kinds  of  church  and  Sunday-school  work,"  and 
yet,  visibly  or  invisibly,  consciously  or  uncon- 
sciously, the  victims  of  spiritual  indigestion  and 
insomnia,  and,  it  may  be,  in  fe,r  greater  danger 
than  they  or  we  dream,  of  one  of  those  strokes 
of  moral  apoplexy,  which  probably  make  among 
"active    church-members"     more     defaulting 


10  THE  BUST  MAN^S  BIBLE. 


presidents  and  absconding  cashiers  than  pure 
hypocrisy  makes.  "We  bnsy  men,  whether  in 
the  study,  the  field,  or  the  counting-room,  on 
the  exchange,  the  street,  the  unfinished  building, 
or  tiie  ocean,  must  see  to  it  that  we  have  strong 
spiritual  meat,  and  also  a  genuine  spiritual  di- 
gestion and  assimilation,  so  that  the  strength  of 
Christ's  word  and  example  shall  not  feil  to  go 
into  all  our  judgment,  all  our  desires,  all  our 
will,  and  all  our  affections,  and  we  not  remotely 
imitate,  but  potently  assimilate  and  reproduce, 
our  Lord  in  aU  we  do  and  are  and  seek. 

Hence  the  large  element  of  instruction  in  our 
worship.  If  adoration  is  the  wine,  instruction 
is  the  meat,  of  our  spiritual  repast.  And  the  ap- 
petite and  the  digestion  T  They  are  study.  The 
spiritual  birth  may  disi)ense  with  it;  but  the 
spiritual  growth  and  training  can  no  more  be 
achieved  in  effective  quantity  and  quality  with- 
out it  than  can  any  other  knowledge  and  training 
which  has  been  largely  committed  to  the  written 
and  printed  page.  A  religious  instruction  limi- 
ted to  sermon  and  lecture  hearing  and  Sunday- 
school  tradition  is  not  enough.     Taken  alone,  it 


THE  BUST  MAN'S  BIBLE.  11 

develops  a  rote  religion  which  pre-empts  the 
mind  to  the  exclusion  of  a  far  better  sort. 
True,  study,  in  anything  not  a  mere  art  or  craft, 
is  one  of  the  best  safe-guards,  though  even  it  is 
not  a  sure  one,  from  rote  education.  What 
student  of  Scripture  who  has  ever  found  by  his 
own  effort,  hidden  beneath  the  letter  of  the  page, 
some  truth  which  "flesh  and  blood  have  not  re- 
vealed" unto  him,  can  forget  its  transcendent 
power  upon  his  spirit.  We  best  relish  and  di- 
gest the  game  we  have  taken  ourselves.  The 
vulture  eats,  the  eagle  will  not  eat,  the  prey  he 
did  not  himself  catch.  Luke  accounted  certain 
hearers  "  more  noble  than  those  of  Thessalonica" 
in  that  even  when  Paul  preached  they  "searched 
the  Scriptures  daily  whether  these  things  were 
so."  And  in  our  own  day  the  busy  men,  of  all 
men,  need  to  do  something  of  the  same  sort  if 
they  would  not  be  spiritually  dyspeptic. 


^ 


11. 

HOW  TO  BEGIN. 

SAID  a  talented  young  man  to  a  musician, 
"  Tell  me  how  to  play  the  sonatas  of  Beet- 
hoven in  their  true  spirit." 

Said  the  musician,  "  You  ask  too  much  of  mej 
yet — I  will  do  what  I  can.  What  do  you  play 
these  days?" 

"Nothing." 

"My  friend!  How  shall  I  tell  you  how  to 
play  Beethoven  when  it  is  not  your  habit  to 
play  anything  at  all  f  To  know  how  to  play 
Beethoven  you  must  first  of  all  know  how  to 
play." 

So  with  the  Bible.  To  know  how  to  study  it, 
we  must  first  of  all  know  how  to  study. 

Now,  wrong  notions  of  how  to  study  are  with- 


THE  BUSY  MAN'S  BIBLE.  13 

out  number,  and  probably  every  one  of  them 
has  been  brought  to  the  study  of  the  Bible;  but 
one  of  the  very  worst  not  consciously  dishonest 
is  the  assumption  that  the  Bible  is  not  to  be 
studied  as  we  study  other  books  and  other 
things,  but  by  a  separate  method  all  its  own. 
From  the  correct  rendering  of  Beethoven  or 
Handel  we  do  not  look  for  the  same  musical  re- 
sults or  mental  effects  as  from  Wagner  or  Rubin- 
stein; yet  we  do  not  hesitate  to  bring  to  the 
renderings  of  all  these  masters  the  same  system 
of  notation,  the  same  rules  of  harmony,  the  same 
methods  of  execution.  But  for  the  Bible  thou- 
sands of  teachers  and  scholars  claim  an  immu- 
nity from  fundamental  methods  of  correct  study, 
without  which  we  cannot  get  a  firmly  founded, 
genuine  conviction  of  the  meaning  and  merits  of 
anything. 

"  Bring  not  your  desecrating  lines  and  plum- 
mets, rules  of  building,  or  tenets  of  architectual 
criticism,  here,"  they  cry;  "this  is  the  King's 
palace."  But  in  fact  all  the  more  because  it  is 
the  King's  palace  ought  it  to  be  tried  and  proved 
by  aU  these  things;  and  in  truth  it  is  only  when 


14  THE  BUST  MAN'S  BIBLE. 


we  have  so  done  that  we  can  raise  the  confession 
fix)m  our  own  inmost  souls,  "This  is  the  house 
of  God;  this  is  the  gate  of  heaven." 

"Doctor,"  once  said  a  convalescent,  "Fm  no 
judge  of  books, — don't  often  read  one;  but  Fm 
reading  one  now  that  seems  to  me  a  very  fine 
book.  I  haven't  noticed  yet  who  wrote  it,  and 
I  don't  know  how  you'd  pronounce  its  title;  but 
if  8  something  like  I-van-hoe." 

"My  friend,"  said  the  physician,  "Fdgive 
large  gold  to  be  in  your  place  long  enough  to  be 
reading  that  book  for  the  first  time  and  not 
knowing  who  wrote  it !" 

Oh  for  the  rare  gift  to  come  to  the  study  of 
the  Word  of  God  as  if  strangers  to  men's  claims 
for  it,  until  its  truth,  sinking  into  mind  and 
heart,  establish  its  authority  and  convince  us  of 
its  inspiration !  The  true  way  to  begin  the 
study  of  all  books  is  the  true  way  for  the  Bible. 
Not  in  a  spirit  of  carping  unbelief,  or  of  con- 
tempt or  suspicion  of  our  teachers;  yet,  in  faith- 
fiihiess  to  Grod,  truth,  and  humanity,  bearing  in 
mind  that  things  are  not  true  because  they  are 
in  the  Bible,    and  cannot  truly  be  Bible  to  us 


THE  BUSY  MAN'S  BIBLE.  15 

until  they  would  be  just  as  true  to  us  if  they 
were  not  in  the  Bible. 

What  ?  Shall  we  hold  the  Scriptures  in  dimin- 
ished reverence  1  No;  there  need  be  no  decrease 
in  the  quantity  of  our  reverence  that  may  not  be 
immeasurably  offset  by  increase  in  its  quality. 
An  ounce  of  reverence  founded  on  one's  own 
personal  conviction  and  experience  of  Scripture 
truth  is  worth  in  God's  sight  a  hundredweight 
of  mere  traditional  reverence.  Scripture  truth; 
— ^is  the  term  a  good  one  ?  Truth  suffers  every 
time  we  put  upon  her  the  manacles  of  a  limiting 
adjective.  Scripture  truth,  scientific  truth,  gos- 
pel truth,  practical  truth?  There  is  but  one 
kind  of  truth;  and  to  it,  wherever  and  however 
found,  we  owe  the  solemn  reverence  we  are  prone 
to  give  to  the  Bible  as  its  greatest  vehicle,  in- 
stead of  to  itself 

But  even  this  is  not  saying  enough.  Truth 
itself,  God's  pure  eternal  truth,  simply  discov- 
ered, observed,  and  emotionally  reverenced,  is 
but  treasure  stiU  buried.  '^The  kingdom  of 
Gk)d  cometh  not  by  [mere  admiring]  observation  " 
— of  it.     Only  as  truth  melts  and  runs  into  our 


16  THE  BUST  MAX' 8  BIBLE. 

hearts,  onr  lives,  our  daily  conduct,  and  is  there 
molded  and  coined  into  justice,  righteousness, 
holiness,  and  universal  love,  do  its  latent  jwwers 
become  actual  values.  There  cannot  be  even  a 
correct  approach  to  the  study  of  truth,  that  re- 
gards truth  or  beauty  as  an  ultimate  and  adequate 
end.  All  such  studyings  are,  as  to  their  spiritual 
value,  but  unfinished  bridges  ending  in  air,  to 
be  swept  away  by  the  first  high  wind  of  our  in- 
tellectual pride,  or  the  first  high  water  of  our 
physical  appetites.  Any  real  spiritual  profit — 
nay,  any  i)ermanent,  potential  conviction  of 
truth — so  got,  is  got  without  genuine  credit  to 
ourselves  or  our -method,  and,  as  it  were,  by 
lucky  accident.  Only  the  student  who  hungers 
and  thirsts  after  righteousness  shall  be  profitably 
filled. 

If  this  be  so,  then  how  much  less  correct  is  an 
approach  to  the  study  of  the  Bible  when  prompted 
by  the  advance  puri)ose  to  justify  some  theory  of 
our  own,  orthodox  or  heterodox,  or  some  belief 
of  our  church  or  of  our  social  circle,  or  of  our 
public  community,  concerning  God's  nature  or 
man's  duty.     But  when   we  think   how  much 


THE  BUST  MAN' 8  BIBLE.  17 

more  of  this  kind  of  stndy  than  of  any  other  has 
been  given  the  Bible  by  the  world,  by  the  church, 
and  by  ourselves,  and  how  much  more  of  it  the 
Bible  has  had  to  bear  than  any  other  book,  we 
Bee  a  way  in  which  the  flippant  old  saying  is 
time,  about  the  Bible  being  "a  fiddle  on  which 
you  can  play  any  tune  you  like. ' '  It  was  a  pious 
monk  who  said,  ''Whoever  seeketh  an  inter- 
pretation in  this  book  shall  get  an  answer  from 
God;  whoever  bringeth  an  interpretation  to  this 
book  shall  get  an  answer  from  the  Devil." 

But  it  is  not  this  error  in  its  grossness  as  visi- 
bly practiced  by  others  not  of  our  sort  that  we 
need  to  be  warned  against;  it  is  as  it  besets  us, 
ourselves,  an  unseen,  unfelt,  subtle  ailment,  in 
our  daily  drawing  near  the  oracles  of  God.  The 
Bereans  searched  the  Scriptures  daily  not  to  for- 
tify, but  to  test,  certain  declarations  of  godly 
men.  They  sought  not  to  prove  that,  but  "  to 
know  whether,"  certain  things  were  so. 

The  one  only  safe  and  sufficient  motive  to  in- 
sure our  correct  approach  to  the  study  of  God's 
Word  is  the  desire  to  make  ourselves  and  the 
world  better.     ' '  Whosoever  doeth  my  will  shall ' ' 


18  THE  BUSY  MAN'S  BIBLE. 

— not  merely  know  the  doctrine;  he  "shall  know 
of  the  doctrine  whether  it  be  of  God." 


S^ 


N 


III. 

HOW  TO  STUDY. 

OW,  supposing  we  have  decided  upon  the 
right  spirit  in  which  to  begin  the  study 
of  the  Bible,  the  fact  still  faces  us  that  we  can- 
not go  on  until  we  know  the  practical  part  of 
how  to  study.  To  study  is  an  art.  Besides  a 
knowledge  of  its  methods,  it  demands  its  own 
habitual  practice.  But  this  practice  cannot  be 
leaped  into;  it  can  only  be  gradually  built  up. 
One  who  has  no  habit  of  study,  can  no  more 
rise  up  from  a  lecture  on  how  to  study  the 
Bible,  and  go  and  put  the  method  at  once  into 
practice,  than  if  the  lecture  had  been  on  how  to 
play  the  harp  or  paint  landscapes. 

Take  an  extreme  case.      Here  is    a    light^ 
thoughtless,  impatient,  restless  person.     All  his 


THE  BU8Y  MAN' 8  BIBLE, 


or  her  powers  of  attention,  memory,  reflection, 
and  judgment,  are  in  a  state  of  disuse.  Suddenly 
something  hapi)ens  to  arouse  such  a  one  to  the 
duty  and  privilege  of  studying  Grod's  Word;  or, 
better,  he  is  siezed  with  a  hunger  and  thirst 
after  righteousness,  and,  asking  little  about  duty, 
hastens  to  the  Book  of  books.  And  behold  !  he 
has  not  a  single  student's  faculty  developed. 
We  call  this  an  extreme  case;  but  is  it  unusual? 
Look  about  over  the  whole  mass  of  any  average 
adult  church-membership.  How  many  have  the 
habit  of  study  t  Or  go  farther.  In  the  teaching 
corps  of  any  average  Sunday-school,  how  many 
are  of  a  studious  habit?  Are  they  frivolous? 
Not  necessarily.  Have  they  a  light  or  heavy 
contempt  for  books  and  learning?  No;  they 
honor  them.  What  then  ?  Simply,  they  are  of 
and  in  the  world's  great  common  life,  and  are 
habitually  giving  the  lion's  share  of  all  their  en- 
ergies to  the  doing  of  things  already  long  ago 
thought  out  by  others;  they  find  no  time  and  have 
no  acquired  skill  for  inquiries,  reflections,  dis- 
coveries, and  genuing  personal  convictions,  con- 
cerning things  that  belong  to  what  they  have 


THE  BUSY  MAN'S  BIBLE.  21 

nnluckDy  distinguished  as  the  *' domain  of 
thought."  We  call  them  busy  people, — ^as  if 
others  could  not  be  as  busy  in  mind  as  they  are 
in  body.  They  need  to  get  somehow  the  habit 
of  study,  and  have  not  noticed  how  much  of  the 
best  of  this  habit  they  already  have,  though  un- 
applied, nor  how  easily  more  of  it  may  bfe  got. 

But  we  who  give  ourselves,  and  are  generally 
given,  credit  as  having  this  habit  of  study, — 
have  we  only  the  habit  of  studying  books,  or 
have  we  that  vastly  better  gift,  a  studious  habit 
of  mind  ?  For  brains  are  so  much  better  than 
books !  And  for  our  busy  people  there  follows 
this  welcome  word:  that  it  is  only  the  habit  of 
book  study,  and  not  the  mere  studious  habit  of 
mind,  that  taxes  our  time  and  leisure.  Also, 
and  better  yet,  that  thousands  who  are  too  busy 
for  book  study  are,  in  the  few  directions  their 
minds  take,  more  constant,  diligent,  genuine 
students,  than  thousands  who,  poring  over  books, 
have  won  the  high  degree  of  gold  si)ectacles. 
The  term  "  hard  study  "  has  got  most  lamenta- 
bly entangled  with  the  notion  of  printed  pages, 
book-covers,  and  feats  of  memory;  but  when  we 


22  THE  BUSY  MAN^8  BIBLE. 

substitute  for  it  the  nobler  word,  "hard  think- 
ing," we  see  how  much  of  it  there  is,  and  how 
much  more  there  might  still  be,  in  this  great, 
busy  world.  We  see  how  much  of  it  there  is 
good  chance  for,  largely  free  from  the  time- 
devouring  captivity  of  the  student's  desk  and 
the  late-gUmmering  lamp.  True  study  is  older 
than  printing,  or  papyrus,  or  Moses'  tables  of 
stone. 

We  emphasize,  then,  these  two  points:  Pirst^ 
the  true  spirit  for  the  undertaking;  the  spirit 
whose  incessant  search  is  for  truth,  to  turn  it  into 
holy  being  and  lovely  doing,  and  that  proves, 
not  truth  from  authority,  but  authority  only 
from  truth,  and  truth  only  from  discernment 
and  conviction  in  the  mind  and  conscience  of  the 
inquirer  himself;  and,  second,  the  true  spirit  for 
the  method;  the  spirit  that  bids  the  mind  be 
always  diligent  rather  than  docile;  the  spirit 
that  weds  a  diligent  mind  to  a  docile  heart;  the 
spirit  that  values  the  studious  mind  above  the 
study  of  books;  the  spirit  of  faithful,  humble, 
hard  thinking.  Until  we  have  in  some  degree 
possessed  ourselves  of  these  two  essentials,  this 


THE  BUST  MAN '8  BIBLE.  23 

spirit  for  the  undertaking  and  this  spirit  for  the 
method,  let  as  not  say  we  know  how  to  study 
the  Bible. 


+ 


I 


IV. 

BRAINS  ARE  BETTER  THAN  BOOKS. 

F  books  were  nearly  as  good  as  brains,  the 
estimates  you  and  I  once  made  of  the  pros- 
pective value  of  some  of  our  schoolmates  would 
not  have  been  so  faulty. 

A.  B.  was  a  fellow  of  quick  i)erception,  you 
remember, — ^attentive,  receptive,  sympathetic, 
imitative,  tractable,  a  lover  of  books  and  knowl- 
edge. To  our  astonishment,  he  has  never  given 
his  generation  a  new  thought, — ^hardly  even  an 
old  thought  in  new  dress.  He  will  die  never 
knowing  that,  with  all  his  habit  of  study,  he  has 
never  had  a  studious  habit  of  mind.  His  mind  is, 
and  ever  has  been,  all  appetite,  and  no  digestion. 
He  never  ruminates  what  he  has  browsed.  He 
retains  what  he  has  acquired  as  sweet  and  undi- 


THE  BUSY  MAN'S  BIBLE.  25 

gested  as  a  sealed  tin  can  contains  condensed  milk. 

C.  D.  was  of  quite  another  sort, — slow  to  com- 
prehend, and  seeming  slower  than  he  was,  ob- 
servant rather  than  attentive,  incredulous,  un- 
imitative,  not  too  tractable,  and  amusingly  dis- 
trustful of  books.  That  fellow  is  to-day  helping 
to  widen  the  knowledge  and  mold  the  thought 
of  his  times.  He  had — what  he  scarcely  realized, 
and  what  we  quite  overlooked — a  studious  habit 
of  mind,  a  spirit  of  investigation  and  reflection, 
and  that  keen  sense  of  perspective  in  his  own 
correlation  of  facts  which  we  call  judgment. 
And  best  of  all,  he  had — found  out  after  school 
days  were  over — a  rare  gift  of  harmoniously 
subordinating  the  teachings  of  books  to  his  ever- 
growing knowledge  of  things  that  books  cannot 
teach.  It  pains  many  to  know  that  he  is  not 
beyond  a  suspicion  of  being  unorthodox.  They 
have  not  proved  the  matter  yet,  either  yea  or  • 
nay;  for  he  shows  no  pride  either  of  orthodoxy 
or  heterodoxy.  And  they  are  rather  afraid  to 
try;  for  they  might  succeed,  and  then  they  would 
not  know  what  to  do  with  him  next. 

What  we  seek  here  to  emphasize  is,    not  the 


26  THE  BUSY  MAN'8  BIBLE. 

great  value  of  mere  intrepidity  or  originality  of 
thought.  "Seek  earnestly  the  best  gifts," — ^but 
originality  is  only  very  good,  not  best.  To  prize 
it  unduly  is  a  species  of  moral  giddiness, — b,  pal- 
pable vanity.  Our  point  is,  not  originality,  but 
the  virtue  and  grace  of  modestly  using  and  priz- 
ing brain  more  than  book. 

A  young  lady,  teaching  in  a  mission  Sunday- 
school  in  one  of  our  Southern  cities,  had  told  a 
pupil — ^a  big,  grimy,  short-haired  athlete,  older 
than  she — that  God  can  do  everything.  By  and 
by,  when  she  was  getting  well  away  from  this, 
to  her,  axiomatic  starting-point,  he  asked: 
"Say,  teacher,  d-d' you  say  God  can  do  every- 
thing!" 

"Yes." 

"Well,  say,  teacher,  can  God  make  a  rock  so 
big 'at  he  can't  lift  it?" 

That  teacher's  easy  life  had  allowed  her  the 
chance  to  "study";  the  pupil's  rude  lot  had 
shut  him  up  to  hard  thinking.  Hard  knocks, 
we  may  guess,  had  forced  him  into  the  habit  of 
questioning  and  reflecting  before  everything  he 
was  asked  to  believe.     The  moment  the  asser- 


THE  BUSY  MAN'S  BIBLE.  27 

tion  of  God's  omnipotence  was  laid  npon  his 
tongue,  he  began  a  mental  mastication  of  it,  to 
reduce  it  to  reasonable  and  intelligible  conditions 
before  swallowing  it.  We  can  pay  no  higher 
homage  to  truth,  in  the  Bible  or  out  of  it,  than 
modestly  but  faithfully  to  hold  it  in  susi)ense 
until  we  can  give  it,  not  a  mere  unquestioning 
assent,  but  the  cordial  testimony  of  our  own  sin- 
cerest  intelligence.  This  is  all  the  more  our 
duty  and  advantage  because  truth  is  easy  to 
digest  in  exact  proportion  to  its  moral  value. 
The  few  truths  absolutely  vital  to  salvation  do 
not  have  to  be  chewed  at  all;  they  are  the  sin- 
cere millf  of  the  word, — or,  let  us  say,  of  the 
cocoanut,  which  some  would  have  us  swallow 
whole,  and  spit  the  shells  up  afterward  if  we  can. 
But  this  plan  of  using  brain  more  than  book  is 
not  only  virtue  and  grace,  it  is  also  opportunity. 
We  can  carry  this  habit  with  us  daily  and  hour- 
ly, as  we  cannot  carry  books.  Consider,  in  this 
land  so  teeming  full  of  men  almost  too  busy  to 
read  the  newspaper,  what  swarms  of  them  have 
found  they  can,  and  for  worldly  gains'  sak© 
must  and  do,    keep   up  through  almost  every 


28  THE  BUSY  MAN' 8  BIBLE. 

waking  hour  a  diligent  thinking,  questioning, 
reflecting,  calculating,  recapitulating,  reconsid- 
ering, deciding !  Thousands  of  just  such  declare 
and  believe  they  would  study  the  Bible  if  they 
could  only — ^as  to  time  and  method — see  how  to 
do  it.  Let  them  simply  give  a  seventh  or  tenth 
of  that  hard  daily  and  hourly  thinking  which 
they  give  to  their  business,  to  the  plainest  utter- 
ances of  the  Bible  upon  God's  nature  and  man's 
duty,  and  they  will  gain  more  knowledge  and 
spiritual  refreshment  than  by  poring  with  eager 
receptiveness  and  docile  assent  over  whole  com- 
mentaries. They  will  get  less  learning,  it  may 
be,  but  more  wisdom. 

And  so  I  make  bold  to  say,  when  you  do  sit 
down  to  study  Scripture,  dispense,  or  at  least 
try  to  dispense,  from  the  beginning,  with  com- 
mentaries and  the  various  other  forms  of  lesson- 
helps. 

What  I  At  the  very  start  t  Yes;  rather  then 
than  later.  Book-helps  oftener  narcotize  than 
stimulate  our  own  thought.  They  make  us  think 
we  are  thinking,  when  we  are  only  locking  step 
with  the  thought  of  some  one  else.     Even  when 


THE  BUSY  MAN'S  BIBLE,  29 

they  help  ns  to  think,  they  are  apt  to  make 
thinking  too  easy.  Easy  thinking  yields  but 
flimsy  thought. 


^ 


V. 

COGITATION  FIRST— COMMENTATORS  LAST. 

BUT  shall  one  set  himself  above  the  finest 
scholarship  of  the  day  and  of  the  agest 
Not  at  all.  Does  the  lad  or  lass  in  school  set 
himself  above  his  preceptor  because  he  toils 
alone  with  slate  and  arithmetic,  and  seeks  aid 
only  in  extremity  ?  All  lesson-helps  should  be 
as  banks  and  bankers  to  our  minds  in  our 
spiritual  commerce  with  the  Bible;  that  is,  to  be 
called  on  for  aid  always  with  a  certain  sparing- 
ness,  and  not  at  aU  until,  as  we  may  say,  our 
own  thinking  powers  have  built  up  for  them- 
selves a  respectable  credit. 

But  would  you  have  every  Tom,  Dick,  and 
Harry  with  a  mind  of  his  own  ?  No.  I  wish  I  could. 
Even  then  all  men  would  not  think  differently. 


TEE  BU8Y  MAN'S  BIBLE.  31 

Men  are  gregarious  in  thought  as  well  as  in 
bodily  activities.  Like  conditions  in  and  about 
us  make  us  like-minded.  The  form  and  spirit  of 
the  civil  government  under  which  we  happen  to 
live,  the  degree  of  industrial,  civil,  political,  or 
private  social  liberty  we  happen  to  enjoy,  power- 
fully mold  our  reasonings  about  God  and  duty, 
and  threaten  to  make  us  the  characterless  re- 
sults of  our  accidental  surroundings,  unless  we 
labor  to  cultivate  those  individual  powers  of 
thought  and  moral  convictions  and  resolve, 
without  which  our  religion  brings  small  honor 
to  God,  poor  strength  to  our  own  souls,  and 
scant  profit  to  mankind. 

Some  one  will  say,  "Why  not,  for  this  very 
danger  of  being  shaped  wholly  by  our  own  sur- 
roundings, put  ourselves  promptly  under  the 
tutelage  of  the  commentators?"  No!  We  should 
thus  escape  the  domination  of  our  own  sur- 
roundings only  to  fall  captive  to  the  conditions 
that  surrounded  the  commentators.  What  those 
conditions  were,  read  in  history,  and  shudder. 
The  commentators  of  the  past  are  of  a  past  the 
most  of  which  the  Christian  world  hopes  never  to 


32  THE  BUST  MAN'S  BIBLE. 

return  to.  Had  they  had  the  light  of  our  day, 
many  a  page  of  theirs  would  never  have  been 
written,  and  few  indeed  would  be  just  what 
they  are. 

As  for  the  commentators  and  lesson-heli)S  of 
to-day,  take,  for  instance,  the  one  you  are  using 
right  now  for  the  "preparation" — what  a 
word — what  a  process — to  substitute  for  genuine 
study — for  genuing  thinking!  the  "prepara- 
tion" of  next  Sunday's  lesson:  Do  you  know 
from  what  older  fountains  of  merely  human 
argument  and  purpose,  or  how  largely  from 
them,  the  fountain  from  which  you  are  drinking 
is  fed  T  Oh,  put  the  lesson-help  aside  !  Rub  out 
your  copied  sums  from  the  tablet  of  your  mind 
and  heart,  and  start  again  with  nothing  but  the 
Bible  and  a  clean  slate, — as  clean  as  you  can 
make  it  from  whatever  thought,  right  or  wrong, 
Athanasius  or  Augustine,  Luther,  Calvin, 
Loyola,  Milton,  Bunyan,  Wesley,  Fenelon,  or 
Coleridge,  may  have  uttered.  Don't  be  afraid  of 
your  own  originality;  there's  no  strong  chance 
that  you  have  enough  of  it  to  be  afraid  of,  Get 
an  answer  from  your  own  soul.     Be  it  right  or 


THE  BUST  MAIL'S  BIBLE.  33 

wrong,  a  shout  or  a  whisper,  get  it  from  your- 
self. Then — to  press  the  school-room  figure — 
bring  your  slate  to  the  class;  look  into  the  com- 
mentators and  lesson-helps  of  past  and  present 
with  dilligence,  with  caution,  with  humility, 
and  with  hunger  and  thirst  after  righteousness 
"prove  all  things,  hold  fast  that  which  is  good." 

One  more  limitation:  We  can  never  make  a 
very  intelligent  or  even  safe  use  of  books  or  tra- 
ditions about  the  Bible  until  we  know  something 
of  whence,  how,  and  wherefore,  as  well  as  from 
whom,  such  books  or  traditions  originated.  We 
should  want  the  history  of  doctrines,  and  not 
any  mere  personal  or  ecclesiastical  sanction  of 
them. 

We  need  as  Bible  students  to  know  concerning 
important  theories  about  God  and  goodness 
whether  they  have  been  truly  drawn  from  the 
Bible  or  only  thrust  into  it  by  the  bias  of  some 
person  or  nation  or  age  or  exigency  of  politics 
or  ecclesiastics.  And  we  can  know.  Histories 
of  these  things  are  neither  scarce  nor  unwieldy 
nor  dry.  Even  a  "business  man,"  keeping  the 
book  somewhere   in   sight,    and  taking  a  little 


34  THE  BUSY  MAN'S  BIBLE. 

dip  into  it  once  a  day  or  twice  a  week,  or  giving 
it  a  single  hour  on  each  of  a  few  Sundays,  may 
read  such  invaluable  helps  to  the  study  of 
Scripture  as  Principal  TuUoch's  "Eeligious 
Thought  in  Great  Britain  in  the  Nineteenth 
C5entury,"  or  Professor  AUan's  "  Ck)ntinuity  of 
Christian  Thought." 

We  say  this  to  those  who  read  few  books  and 
have  no  habit  of  book  study;  who  do  not  pro- 
pose to  become  learned  in  the  deep  theories  of 
religious  philosophers;  who  do  not  ask  how  to 
study  even  the  Bible  with  the  notion  that  to 
study  the  Bible  is  in  itself  a  virtue, — but 
who  seek  to  study  it  as  one  of  the  very  best 
means  known  for  learning  how  best  to  love  and 
obey  God,  and  love  and  serve  mankind.  We 
do  not  escape  the  theories  of  religious  philoso- 
phers by  remaining  ignorant  of  their  origin  and 
history;  we  only  wear  their  shakles  unconscious- 
ly. To  read  one  or  two  historical  surveys  of 
this  sort  is  a  wonderful  emancipation  from  an 
unquestioning  and  therefore  ignoble  subjection 
to  the  Scripture  interpretations  of  ages  darker 
than  our  own.     Yet  mark;  to  read  even  such 


TEE  BU8Y  MAN' 8  BIBLE.  35 

books  instead  of  the  Scriptures,  or  in  any  way 
to  give  them  precedence  over  the  Scriptures,  is 
to  show  not  how,  but  how  not,  to  study  the 
Bible. 

All  our  study  of  the  Bible,  with  or  without 
books,  should  give  us  a  result  within  ourselves 
independent  of  books  at  last,  and  from  first  to 
last  should  be  faithful,  diligent  thinking, — a 
thinking  unceasingly  centered  upon  the  prob- 
lem, How  more  and  more  clearly  and  fully  day 
by  day  to  achieve  in  all  our  being,  not  Scripture 
lore,  but  the  likeness — and  to  apply  in  all  our 
doings  the  principles — of  Jesus  Christ  our  Lord. 


VI. 

COMPARE  WATCHES. 

WE  must  not  yield  ourselves  blindly  to 
the  written  thought  of  ages  past,  nor 
drift  supinely  upon  whatever  current  of  thought 
of  our  own  day  we  may  happen  to  be  caught  by. 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  we  must  not,  as 
students,  indulge  ourselves  in  a  self-sufl&cient 
and  persistent  privacy  and  isolation.  The  truth 
is  that  cluster  of  grapes  which  the  spies  brought 
out  of  the  valley  of  Eshcol.  No  one  man  could 
carry  it  without  damage  or  loss.  But  one  man 
thrust  his  staff  among  its  stems, — maybe  that 
staff  was  a  lesson-help, — "  and  they  bare  it  upon 
a  staff  between  two."  I  wonder  if  those  two 
were  not  Caleb  and  Joshua;  for  they  were  just 
the   kind   who    would   rather    surrender  some 


THE  BUSY  MA N ' 8  BIBLE.  37 

liberty  and  go  yoked  thus  to  each  other,  than 
bring  a  mangled  and  bleeding  truth  to  their 
fellows  camped  in  the  wilderness. 

Ko  one  man  is  tall  enough  or  broad  enough  to 
carry  the  whole  truth  without  dragging  it  in  the 
dust.  We  need  to  be  almost  constantly  testing 
the  correctness  of  our  own  convictions  of  truth, 
righteousness,  and  goodness  by  a  generous  con- 
sideration of  the  convictions  of  those  round 
about  us  both  near  and  far,  both  like  and  un- 
like. "We  need  not  be  servile;  we  need  not  be 
unstable;  we  need  not  be  rashly  or  weakly  im- 
pressionable; our  aim  need  not — must  not — be 
uniformity;  it  must  be  the  elimination  of  error; 
our  establishment  as  nearly  as  possible  in  abso- 
lute truth  for  absolute  righteousness'  and  lovli- 
ness'  sake.  Our  judgments — even  our  conscien- 
ces— are  watches  for  the  keeping  of  truth  instead 
of  time;  and  sometimes  their  hands  catch.  It  is 
one  of  the  strongest  reasons  for  the  organic 
grouping  of  God's  servants  in  the  church  form, 
that  to  study  the  Bible  best  we  must  study  it 
much  in  friendly  concert,  seeking  neither  confir- 
mation nor  contradiction  more  than  its  opposite; 


38  THE  BUSY  MAN'S  BIBLE. 

but  taking  both  with  the  same  modest,  kindly, 
thoughtful  caution  and  courage;  differing  when- 
ever, but  only  when,  we  must;  difTering,  but 
not  dividing.  There  is  nothing  like  that  to 
save  our  notions  of  God  and  duty  from  fantasti- 
cal and  mischievous  distortions. 

We  repeat:  that  we  must,  first,  last,  and  al- 
ways, make  our  study  of  the  Bible  a  search  for 
absolute  truth  back  of  all  assertion;  for  absolute 
right  back  of  all  will  and  authority;  for  absolute 
duty  back  of  all  exigency  or  commandment,  and 
of  supreme  spontaneous  goodness  back  of  and 
above  all  questions  of  dutyt  Our  Bible  study 
should  not  always  be  a  short  search ;  but  always 
it  should  be  a  search  for  the  shortest,  simplest 
way  to  our  best  possible  understanding  and 
practical  acceptance  of  these  things.  Not  be 
strong  in  the  Bible,  but  "  be  strong  in  the  Lord." 

The  unconscious  method  even  of  great  think- 
ers has  too  often  been  to  start  with  certain  pre- 
conceptions of  what  was  right  or  necessary  for 
the  establishment  or  maintenance  of  some  sys- 
tem of  ecclesiastical  order,  conservative  or  pro- 
gressive; to  model  upon  this  their   conceptions 


THE  BUSY  MAN'S  BIBLE.  39 

of  God's  nature,  and  from  such  conceptions  to 
draw  their  definitions  of  man's  duty  to  himself, 
his  fellows  and  his  race,  using  the  Bible  from  be- 
ginning to  end,  not  to  determine,  but  only  to 
fortify,  their  positions.  If  great  and  holy  men 
have  fallen  into  this  error,  how  much  more  may 
we  do  so  unless  we  take  heed  how  we  study  the 
Bible. 

But  the  fault  would  be  immeasurably  greater 
in  us  than  in  them  if  we  should  follow  their 
missteps.  They,  even  in  and  through  their 
error,  were  ahead  of  their  age;  but  we,  repeat- 
ing it,  can  only  be  behind  ours.  Wherefore  let 
us  see  to  it  that  in  studying  the  Scriptures  we 
draw  not  our  theology  from  our  politics,  and 
our  morals  from  our  theology;  but  our  theology 
from  the  noblest  morals  we  can  find  in  the  Bible, 
and  our  politics  from  our  theology. 

But  by  this  method  see  what  more  we  gain: 
The  moral  intent  and  value,  in  every  page  and 
text  of  Scripture,  become  naturally  the  primary 
and  paramount  consideration.  For  those  we 
search,  and  finding  those  according  to  the  best 
measure  of  our  moral  perceptions,  we  exchange 


40  THE  BUSY  MAN'S  BIBLE. 

Cahon's  solicitude  for  Luther's  comparative  un- 
concern as  to  whether  Moses  wrote  the  Penta- 
teuch, or  Paul  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews. 
Questions  of  authorship,  discrepancies  of  text> 
apparent  historical  inaccuracies,  seeming  contra- 
dictions of  our  scientific  knowledge,  whether  this 
page  is  poetry  or  history,  or  another  is  legend  or 
&ct,  are  matters  we  can  commit  to  professional 
scholars,  or  our  own  later  leisure.  The  mind — 
the  spirit^ — that  has  accustomed  itself  to  see  that 
the  fundamental  truth  and  essential  part  of  any 
sincere  utterance  remains  potentially  the  same 
whether  its  literary  form  be  mythus,  legend, 
allegory,  i)oetr5',  song,  drama,  romance,  philoso- 
phy, or  history,  has  learned  the  most  important 
single  thing  that  can  be  learned  of  how  to  study 
the  Bible.  This  will  lead  to  another  noble 
thing. 


+ 


VI!. 

THE  RIGHT  SPIRIT    IS    NINE-TENTHS   OF    THE 
RIGHT  METHOD. 

WHAT  we  come  to  the  Bible  for  when  we 
come  rightly  is  not  rules  of  life.  What, 
not  even  them?  No;  we  come  for  principles  of 
life,  not  rules.  Alas !  it  is  still  our  lower  man 
that  is  speaking  when  we  ask  to  be  driven  in 
harness  by  rules,  instead  of  following,  unharness- 
ed, the  beckoning  guidance  of  principles.  The 
essence  of  Christian  conduct  is  to  rise  beyond  the 
schoolmastership  of  rules  and  commandments 
into  the  fulfilment  of  principles  and  precepts, 
where  duty  is  swallowed  up  in  an  understanding 
choice  and  an  all-embracing  love.  Eules  are 
like  the  boundary  lines  we  lay  along  the  surfe^e 
of  the  ground  to  part  our  lot  or  field  from  that 


42  THE  BUSY  MAN'S  BIBLE. 

of  otir  neighbor;  but  principles  are  like  that 
solemn  clause  in  the  wording  of  Spanish  land- 
titles,  which  gives  the  holder  ownership  and  do- 
mination *'  from  the  heavens  to  the  center  of  the 
earth."  This  is  the  way  we  must  seek  to  own  a 
moral  truth.  It  must  be  ours  not  merely  along 
and  between  fixed  lines  on  a  certain  tract  of 
earth;  but  ours  from  the  throne  of  God  to  the 
center  of  our  corporate  being. 

Now  two  things  are  essential  to  our  real 
ownership  of  a  moral  truth.  Whatever  else  we 
may  fail  to  understand  about  it,  we  must  under- 
stand its  absolute  righteousness;  and  we  must 
give  it  the  consent  of  our  aflfections  and  wills. 
To  call  a  thing  right  without  feeling  it  right,  is 
wrong.  To  try  to  feel  it  right  merely  because  it 
has  been  called  right,  is  to  yield  that  homage  to 
authority  which  God  has  nowhere  given  us  any 
right  to  yield  to  anything  but  that  which  we  see 
to  be  true  and  right. 

And  here  we  are  put  in  mind  that  some  truths 
in  the  Bible  are  worth  vastly  more  than  others, 
both  for  their  essential  importance  and  for  the 
degree  of  our  ability  truly  to  possess  them.    The 


THE  BUST  MAN'S  BIBLE.  43 

truth  is  worth  nothing  to  us  merely  for  being  in 
the  Bible.  Its  value  begins  with  and  is  bounded 
by  our  spiritual  discernment  of  it;  not  a  con- 
sciousness of  some  supernatural  operation,  but  a 
discernment  that  enlists  the  consent  of  our 
whole  spirit,  and  no  more  depends  any  longer 
on  whether  the  rest  of  mankind  believe  or  deny 
it  than  if  God  had  spoken  it  to  us  audibly  out  of 
the  sky.  Spiritual  experience  is  authority. 
"Blessed  art  thou,  Simon  Bar-jona" — ^and — 
"The truth  shall  make  you  free." 

Still,  Bible  students  will  saj^,  "  Give  us  rules. 
To  give  us  only  principles  takes  us  by  surprise. 
We  yearn  for  rules;  a  few,  at  least.  Give  us  a 
method."     Very  well. 

Bring  to  the  study  of  the  Bible  such  habits  of 
study  as  belong  to  your  particular  daily  life. 
Are  you  an  employee  1  You  give  studious  con- 
sideration to  all  your  employer's  orders  and  in- 
structions. You  observe  minutely  their  letter; 
but  you  do  so,  not  to  evade,  but  the  more  surely 
to  understand  and  execute,  their  spirit;  and  you 
decide  the  spirit  of  any  particular  order  by  the 
spirit  of  his  whole  business.     You  view  his  com- 


44  THE  BUSY  MAN'S  BIBLE. 

mands  very  practically.  Your  study  of  them  is 
not  speculative  or  controversial;  it  is  always  to 
know  what  to  do,  how  to  behave !  Bring  that 
habit  of  study  to  God's  and  God's  prophets' 
orders  and  instructions.  Are  you  an  employer  t 
Have  you  a  large  and  important  business  cor- 
resiwndence  ?  Then  you  are  a  laborous  student 
whenever  you  oi)en  your  mail.  You  have  to 
discern  the  exact  intent,  as  far  as  you  can,  of 
each  and  every  epistle.  Now  and  then  one  puz- 
zles you.  Then  you  try  to  put  yourself  as  far  as 
you  may  into  its  writer's  place.  You  call  in  all 
the  knowledge  you  can  get  from  others  to  help 
you  to  a  conclusion,  yet  just  as  diligently  you 
see  to  it  that  you  catch  no  false  bias  from  them, 
or  accept  their  conclusions  without  truly  making 
them  5'our  own.  You  beware,  too,  of  all  inelastic 
rules  of  interpretation.  You  also  keep  down 
your  own  self-assertion.  You  put  away  all  in- 
genious constructions.  And  so  you  read  and 
weigh,  and  read  and  weigh.  Do  so  with  the 
Bible. 

Study,  we  say  again,  is  a  kind  of  eating.     If 
your  mind  has  not  eaten  much  for  a  long  time, 


THE  BUSY  MAN'S  BIBLE.  45 


feed  lightly,  but  often.  Line  upon  line.  Three 
lines  a  day  are  far  better  than  twenty -one  lines 
once  a  week.  Yet  remember  the  Bible  is  no 
mere  wood-pile,  from  which  to  draw  a  fagot  or 
an  armful  at  random.  It  is  a  structure.  Enter 
in  by  its  door.  Xever  take  up  a  book  of  the 
Bible  to  study  it,  or  any  part  of  it,  without 
studying  first  the  great  main  subject  and  motive 
of  the  book.  To  consider  to  whom,  and  specifi- 
cally for  what,  it  was  written,  is  of  more  worth 
than  to  know  by  whom  it  is  written.  Never 
lose  sight  of  these  as  you  press  on  into  the  study 
of  its  parts. 

Never  be  content  with  an  understanding  of 
less  than  the  eternal  moral  principle  underlying 
the  narrative  or  discourse,  and  its  practical 
bearings  on  your  own  life.  Push  for  these  as  a 
storming  party  pushes  for  the  citadel,  not  stop- 
ping on  the  right  hand  or  on  the  left  to  gather 
intellectual  booty.  Never  conclusively  call  an 
interpretation  of  God's  "Word  your  own  because 
your  church  or  mine  declares  or  denies  it^  but 
only  when  you  could  not  help  but  call  it  your 
own  if  all  the  churches  on  earth  forbade  it.     Yet 


46  THE  BUSY  MAM' 8  BIBLE. 

remember  the  church  is  your  teacher  and  your 
mother.  Jesus  Christ  is  her  husband.  May 
you  be  such  a  student  of  his  holy  Word  that 
others,  seeing  j^our  good  works,  may  glorify  our 
Father  in  heaven. 


^ 


VIII. 

LAPPING  AS  A  DOG  LAPPETH. 

BUT,  now,  how  is  the  "busy  man" — that 
man  the  work  of  whose  life  and  religion  is 
not,  and  cannot  be,  Bible-study — to  pursue 
enough  Bible  study  to  insure  him  spiritual  nour- 
ishment ?  First  of  all,  he  has  got  to  class  it  with 
sleeping  and  eating  among  life's  genuine  and 
daily  necessities.  He  must  have  his  daily 
"fifteen  minutes  for  refreshment"  in  spiritual 
things. 

"We  will  assume,  then,  that  he  sets  apart  that 
much  time  on  every  work-day,  say  at  bedtime  or 
on  rising,  and  that  to  this  he  adds  one  hour  on 
Sunday  without  sacrificing  church  attendance  or 
Bible  class.  To  avoid  neglecting  the  matter,  he 
knows  that  he  must  have  a  fixed  meal-time  for 


48  THE  BUST  MAN'S  BIBLE 

his  spiritual  repast.  Let  us  suppose  his  Sunday 
hour  is  in  the  afternoon  or  evening.  Two  ser- 
mons are  sometimes  better  than  one,  but  one 
with  an  hour  of  Bible  study  is  better  than  two 
without  it. 

In  almost  any  case  the  International  lessons 
are  the  best  line  of  study  for  him  to  follow.  The 
busy  man  is  kept  in  view  in  their  selection  and 
treatment.  They  have  a  current  literature,  and 
are  accommodated  to  the  plan  of  transient  daily 
study.  All  the  weekly  religious  journals  treat 
them,  and  the  various  quarterlies  cost  but  five 
cents  each.  But — supposing  you  to  be  the 
''busy  man,"  and  the  Sunday  hour  to  have 
come— be  warned  once  more;  do  not  begin  the 
lesson's  study  in  any  sort  of  'Messon-help." 
Don't  cry  "help"  till  your  strength  fails.  Gro 
straight  to  the  Scripture  text  itself.  Helps  will 
be  good  by  and  by,  not  to  give  us  first  concep- 
tions, but  to  supplement  and  confirm  our  right 
conceptions  and  correct  our  wrong  ones. 

Head  the  Scripture  text  of  the  lesson  carefully, 
with  as  much  context  as  may  be  needed  to  make 
the  meaning  of  the  passage  as  plain  as  context 


THE  BUST  MAN'S  BIBLE.  49 

can.  Then  read  the  text  again,  slowly  and  with 
great  scrutiny.  Eead  it  aloud,  distributing  the 
emphasis  with  your  best  accuracy;  this  often 
sheds  a  sudden  flood  of  light  upon  the  page,  and 
meanings  that  have  been  hiding  away  persist- 
ently start  from  cover  at  sound  of  a  voice.  Eead 
again,  noting  marginal  readings.  Eead  again  in 
the  Eevised  Version.  Eead  again.  Sooner  or 
later,  this  rubbing  wiU  bring  out  a  new  lustre. 
Note  the  lesson's  time,  place,  circumstances,  per- 
sonages, their  relations  to  each  other,  etc. ;  but 
do  not  let  these  or  any  other  by-paths  carry  you 
far  from  the  main  road.  You  are  a  busy  man, 
seeking  food  and  refreshment.  Seek  the  vital, 
practical  truth  of  the  lesson.  Try  to  find  some 
central  idea  for  which  the  passage  seems  to  have 
been  written.  So  found,  it  will  be  worth  ten 
times  as  much  as  if  found,  without  search,  in  a 
lesson-help.  But  do  not  be  fanciful;  do  not  be 
ingenious.  Seek  out  the  great  simplicities  of  the 
science,  art,  and  practice  of  living:  "the  way, 
the  truth,  the  life."  Try  to  simplify  truth. 
You  can  never  be  sure  that  truth  is  truth  until 
it  is  simple.     The  doctrines  of  first  importance 


50  THE  BU8Y  MAN'S  BIBLE. 

are  all  simple;  what  cannot  be  simplified  is  not 
of  first  importance;  put  it  to  one  side.  Christ 
never  made  the  essentials  of  his  religion  hard  to 
understand. 

You  use,  of  course,  a  reference  Bible.  Do  not 
try  to  look  out  all  the  references;  but  if  there  is 
any  parallel  passage,  read  and  compare  it  care- 
fully with  the  lesson  text.  Thus  your  hour  will 
be  consumed.  Yet  the  passage  may  refuse  to 
yield  any  new  light  or  inspiration,  and  as  you 
push  aside  your  book  or  books,  and  rise  from  the 
task,  you  wonder  at  the  committee's  choice  of 
this  lesson.  Hence  it  is  well  to  know  that  much 
harder,  more  experienced,  and  notedlj^  success- 
ful students  often  have  the  same  trouble  with 
lessons  that  nevertheless  turn  out  at  length  to  be 
the  very  richest  in  their  yield.  The  new  light 
this  lesson  is  to  shed  may  delay  its  coming  until 
near  the  end  of  the  week. 

Meanwhile,  here  are  fifteen  minutes  of  each 
day  in  which  to  pursue  the  subject.  In  them 
we  turn  to  lesson -helps.  Almost  all  of  these  give 
a  list  of  Scripture  readings  bearing  on  the  sub- 
ject of  the  following  Sunday's  lesson,  one  for 


THE  BUSY  MAN'S  BIBLE.  51 

each  day.  Eead  one  each  day,  but  with  it  read 
the  lesson  itself.  Give  what  is  left  of  the  fifteen 
minutes  daily  to  a  careful  use  of  the  lesson-help. 
So  the  week  wears  around. 

One  more  suggestion,  where  a  great  many 
must  be  withheld  for  the  sake  of  brevity:  It  is 
good,  in  the  early  weeks  of  a  quarter,  to  read, 
each  week-day  morning,  in  place  of  the  reading 
selected  by  the  lesson-help,  two  of  the  twelve 
Sabbath  lessons  in  the  series  of  the  quarter,  in 
their  order  of  time.  Thus  we  may  come  into 
understanding  of,  and  harmony  with,  the  sacred 
writer's  intention,  gain  and  hold  a  general  over- 
sight of  our  field  of  inquiry,  and  avoid  that  frag- 
Ibentary  treatment  which  dwarfs  so  much — 
nearly  all — lay  Bible  study. 

On  Sunday  morning  you  come  to  Bible  class. 
What  has  been  gained  !  First,  you  have  found 
that  you  can  "find  time  to  look  at  the  lesson," 
just  as  women,  as  soon  as  they  feel  the  necessity, 
find  time  to  read  the  newspaper.  'Next,  you 
have,  with  a  minimum  of  labor,  aggregated  an 
amount  of  week-day  study  to  which  you  could 
not  have  given  ninety  minutes  continuously,  nor 


52  THE  BUSY  MAN'S  BIBLE. 

forty-five,  any  day  in  the  whole  work-week. 
And  then  yon  have  taken  yonr  spiritual  bread 
in  the  best  way  for  its  effectiveness  as,  so  to 
speak,  tonic  and  nourishment.  And  at  length 
yon  meet  your  class-leader  in  the  class  hour,  not 
"with  the  lesson  prepared," — every  hour  in  the 
week  would  not  be  enough  for  that;  it  is  a  bot- 
tomless deep, — but  with  yourself  somewhat  pre- 
pared for  the  lesson,  and  the  leader  enabled  to 
teach  you  twice,  thrice,  four  times  as  much  as 
he  could  if  you  came  to  get  your  first  impressions 
fix)m  him.  If  he  cannot,  you  may  susi)ect  him 
of  having  "glanced  over  the  lesson  "  for  the  first 
time  a  half-hour  before  the  time  for  meeting  his 
class:  If  so,  quit  him  !  Find  one  who  can  teacB. 
you  somethiing,  or  else  become  a  teacher  your- 
self Men  fully  as  busy  as  you  manage  to  do  it, 
and  grow  in  grace  by  it.  So  can  you  or  I. 
And  now,  as  to  teaching. 


A 


IX. 

PROVE  THE  BOOK  BY  TRUTH,  NOT  TRUTH 
BY  THE  BOOK. 

THEY  say  of  some  hardy  shrubs  that  one 
may  take  them  and  invert  them,  planting 
their  branches  in  the  ground  and  leaving  theii* 
roots  outspread  in  the  air,  and  the  roots  will  be- 
come leafy  and  fruitful  branches  and  the 
branches  will  become  roots,  so  like  are  the  two 
in  their  essential  nature.  So  like  each  other  are 
study  and  teaching.  Nothing  has  been  amply 
studied  till  we  feel  we  can  teach  it;  and  no 
teaching  can  keep  its  due  freshness  and  energy 
once  the  teacher  ceases  to  be  a  student.  The 
right  kind  of  study  is  a  teaching  oneself,  and  the 
right  kind  of  teaching,  especially  of  such  inex- 
haustible themes  as  those  of  the  Bible,  is  mainly 


64  THE  BUSY  MAN'S  BIBLE. 

a  studying  with  others.  To  know  truly  how  to 
study  the  Bible  will  itself  show  us  how  to 
teach  it. 

And  this  can  never  be  rightly  by  a  system 
and  method  all  the  Bible's  own.  As  in  its  study, 
so  in  its  teaching,  we  must  recognise  and  follow 
the  great  general  principles  of  the  twin  arts  of 
studying  and  teaching  any  and  all  things;  the 
very  first  of  which  is  that  all  sorts  of  truth  are 
one  sort  at  laist  and  that  the  only  competent  and 
final  authority  of  truth  and  right  is  conviction 
in  the  mind  and  conscience  of  him  to  whom  it  is 
addressed.  It  is  a  sad  perversion  of  the  true  art 
of  teaching,  and  saddest  when  the  things  taught 
are  those  of  the  Bible,  for  a  teacher,  either  di- 
rectly or  by  implication,  to  ask  his  pupils  to  pay 
assents  and  consents  in  advance  of  convictions 
imparted.  The  Bible  is  not  itself  the  truth. 
Grant  that  it  is,  somehow  as  no  other  book  is, 
God's  book,  and  that  he  made  it;  yet  God  did 
not  make  truth  any  more  than  he  created  him- 
self; and  that  teacher  is  far  astray  who  accepts 
and  teaches  moral  truth  because  it  is  in  the 
Bible  instead  of  accepting  and    teaching    the 


THE  BUST  MAN^S  BIBLE.  55 

Bible  because  he  ever  more  and  more  finds  it  the 
richest,  purest  vehicle  of  moral  truth  on  earth. 
Hence  this  for  a  rule:  Keep  your  teaching  con- 
centrated upon  those  few  great  simple  truths  to 
the  understanding  and  acceptance  of  which 
books  and  scholarship  are  only  aids,  not 
essentials. 

There  are  those  who  claim  that  certain  funda- 
mental and  preliminary  truths  must  be  accepted 
and  taught  on  the  pure  authority  of  the  Bible  or 
we  cannot  begin  to  teach  the  Bible  at  all. 

Suppose  a  case.  I  bid  a  new  pupil  open  the 
scriptures  and  read: 

"  *  In  the  beginning  God  created '  " — He  stops. 
What  is  the  trouble  ? 

"  I  do  not  believe  there  is  a  God." 

What  ought  I  to  reply;  that  he  must  begin 
with  that  belief  or  we  cannot  begin  at  all  ?  His 
blood  would  be  on  my  head.     No,  I  should  say, 

"Kever  mind  that  now;  a  great  many  men 
fancy  they  entirely  and  incessantly  believe  there 
is  no  God;  and  a  great  many  who  fancy  they  en- 
tirely and  incessantly  believe  God  is,  have  not 
even  found  out  that  such  a  belief  is  a  thing  of  de- 


56  THE  BUSY  MAN' 8  BIBLE. 

grees.  Those  who  entirely  and  incessantly  either 
believe  or  disbelieve  in  God  are  rare.  The  men 
whose  minds  were  never  shaken  with  doubts 
did  not  write  the  Psalms.  Thoroughly  and  con- 
stantly to  believe  that  '  God  is  and  is  the  re- 
warder  of  them  that  diUigently  seek  him,'  is  a 
great  achievement  and  this  book  offers  to  show 
that  to  do  so  is  a  possible  and  blessed  thing. 
Let  us  open  it  reverently" — 

He  interrupts:  "Why  should  I  reverence  a 
book  whose  very  first  word  I  am  not  ready  to 
accept?" 

What  shall  I  answer?  Shall  I  try  to  show 
him  how  unreasonable  he  is?  No,  I  will  say, 
"Never  mind  reverence  for  the  hook  just  yet. 
You  have  abundant  reverence  for  truth,  have 
you  not?" 

"  Abundant ! "  he  replies, 

I  doubt  it;  but  I  only  say,  "Well,  we  will 
read  on  a  little  way  and  see  if,  right  here  on  this 
first  leaf,  involved  in  a  narrative  of  some  sort, — 
no  matter  just  what  sort  right  now, — we  do  not 
find  one  of  the  richest  treasuries  of  moral  truth 
ever  written  or  printed  on  one  book  leaf  by  the 


THE  BUSY  MAN'S  BIBLE.  57 

hand  of  man.  We  shall  see  whether  the  kind  of 
God  here  described  or  implied  is  one  whose  ex- 
istence and  nature  it  is  worth  while  to  consider 
any  farther."     And  so  we  begin  again. 

Conviction  first,  creed  afterward.  From  his 
own  experience  a  friend  tells  me  this:  He  met 
on  the  highway  travelling  on  horseback,  as  he 
was,  and  in  the  same  direction,  a  stranger,  but 
one  known  to  him  as  an  irascible  and  violent 
skeptic.  Said  he,  by  and  by,  ''Well,  as  the 
Bible  says" — 

It  was  a  red  rag  to  the  other.  "I  don't  be- 
lieve the  Bible  ! — No,  not  '  some  things  in  it ' 
either ! — Not  a  line  ! — ^Nota  word  ! — No,  I  don't  I 
Name  it !  name  anything  in  that  book  that  I 
believe;  I  defy  you  !  " 

"  Why,  my  friend,  you  believe  '  A  soft  answ^* 
turneth  away  wrath.'  " 

"Yes,  I  do." 

"Well,  hereafter  read  the  Bible  for  what  you 
already  believe  in  it.  You  will  be  astonished  to 
find  what  a  large  and  precious  part  that  is  of  the 
whole  book  and  of  every  portion  of  the  whole 
book.     That  is  mainly  what  the  whole  book  was 


58  THE  BUSY  MAN'S  BIBLE. 

written  for." — They  went  their  several  ways. 
Tears  afterward,  journeying  in  the  same  re- 
gion, this  chance  teacher  of  an  hour  on  the  high- 
way found  his  pupil  a  devout  and  active  member 
of  the  church  of  Christ.  He  had  proved  the  Bible 
by  truth,  not  truth  by  the  Bible.  Hundreds  of 
us  unconsciously  satisfy  ourselves  with  trying  to 
teach  the  Bible,  instead  of  simply  using  the 
Bible  to  teach  Christianity. 


X. 

TEACH  THE  CHRIST-LIFE. 

STUDYING  or  teaching,  it  is  one;  the  pur- 
suit of  truth  or  beauty  for  mere  truth  or 
beauty's  sake  is  a  vain  mistake  of  means  for  ends. 
The  end  of  Bible  teaching  is  not  only  not  the 
Bible,  it  is  not  even  truth  or  beauty;  not  even 
the  beauty  of  holiness.  It  is  the  impartation  to 
— nay,  better,  it  is  the  development  of,  truth — 
all  kinds  of  truth — in  the  pupil's  daily  conduct, 
and  of  all  kinds  of  beauty  in  his  character. 
The  end  of  all  true  Bible  teaching — we  all  know 
it;  the  only  trouble  is  to  remember  it — and  not 
the  ultimate  end  alone,  but  the  immediate  end 
every  time  we  sit  down  to  it — is  the  develop- 
ment  of  a  better  likeness  of  Christ  in  the 
pupil's  conduct  and   character.      This  and  this 


60  THE  BUSY  MAN'S  BIBLE. 

only  is  what  I  mean  by  teaching  Christianity. 
This  is  what  I  mean  by  using  the  Bible  to 
teach  Christianity.  K^ot  a  headlong  attempt  to 
show  Christ  manifestly  set  forth  in  every  page 
and  paragraph;  that  would  be  trying  to  begin 
at  the  top  to  mount  Jacob's  ladder:  Not  the 
cramming  of  final,  crowning  truths  of  Christian- 
ity into  parts  of  scripture  that  do  not  really 
contain  them;  distorting  the  Bible  to  teach 
Christianity:  Not  contriving  allegoric  or  sym- 
bolic meanings  and  then  swamping  and  sinking 
them  with  eager  and  far-fetched  moralizings; 
drowning  the  Bible  to  teach  Christianity:  Not 
expanding,  even  in  studying  the  apostolic  writ- 
ings, upon  the  ever-so-valuable  non-essentials 
that  accompany  Christianity,  as  if  thej'  were 
parts  of  its  essence.  The  true  use  of  the  Bible 
is  none  of  these.  Its  true  use  in  a  teacher's  hands 
is  for  him  the  better  to  maintain  that  all  truth,  all 
beauty,  are  parts  of  Christianity,  and  finding 
whatever  truth  and  beauty  are  really  contained  in 
the  page  before  him,  to  relate  and  adapt  them  accu- 
rately, faithfully,  and  with  all  skiUful  despatch,  to 
Christianity's  only  one  or  two  supreme  essentials. 


THE  BUSY  MAN'S  BIBLE.  61 

So  we  say  once  more,  whatever  the  book  of 
scripture,  whatever  the  passage,  whatever  mo- 
mentary indirection  may  be  necessary,  the  end 
always  in  sight,  the  battle  standard,  the  goal  in 
the  race,  must  be  the  inculcation  of  practical 
Christianity.  We  must  not  say  make  all  things 
bear  to  that  point,  but  use  everything  only  and 
always  as  it  does  naturally  bear  to  that  point; 
and  where  it  does  not,  hasten  by.  Moreover, 
we  must  labor  to  hold  the  pupil  as  steadfastly  to 
the  same  effort.  Whatever  arises  in  either  the 
teacher's  or  the  pupil's  mind,  let  it  be  met  by 
the  challenge,  as  of  a  gentle  gatekeeper, — what 
can  you  tell  us  of  practical  Christianity  ? 

There  are  ways  of  teaching  the  Bible  that 
leave  Christianity  untaught;  the  Bible  is  not 
Christianity;  Christianity  is  at  least  as  much 
older  than  the  Bible  as  Enoch  is.  The  Bible, 
even  if  every  separate  word  of  it  be  divinely  in- 
spired is  only  Christianity's  revelation,  the  tree 
that  bears  Christianity.  The  words  of  Christ, 
hanging  from  that  tree,  are  its  fruit.  But  it  also 
bears  Christianity  in  all  its  parts;  for  Christianity 
is  its  all-pervasive  essence;  and  whatever  part  of 


62  THE  BUSY  MAN'S  BIBLE. 

the  Bible  we  teach,  be  it  root,  bark,  sapwood, 
heart,  leaf,  flower,  fruit  or  seed,  our  constant, 
preeminent,  diligent  purpose  should  be,  must 
be,  to  extract  fix)m  it  by  the  distilling  power  of 
thought  and  converse,  the  eternal  truths  of 
Christianity  and  turn  them  into  duty,  conscience 
and  choice.  The  Bible,  Christianity,  even  Christ 
himself,  are  but  flint  to  us,  not  fire,  save  as  they 
kindle  in  us  the  pure  flames  of  justice,  mercy 
and  love.  No  follower  of  Christ  may  hope  to 
profit  any  soul  to  whom  he  teaches  the  Bible 
except  when  he  so  teaches  it  as  to  widen  and  in- 
tensify the  Christ-Ufe  in  the  affections  and  daily 
actions  of  his  learners.  This  is  the  whole  final 
purpose  of  the  Bible.  Whenever  we  do  not  in 
some  degree  accomplish  this  we  do  not  succeed 
in  really  teaching  the  Bible  at  all.  And  since 
every  counterfeit  sort  of  Bible-teaching  is  easier 
than  this  sort,  we  should  make  this  sort  our  par- 
amount purpose  each  time  we  sit  or  stand  to 
teach,  and  from  the  moment  we  begin,  to  the 
end. 


* 


XI. 

DON'T  DISCOURSE— AND  DON'T   DOGMATIZE. 

IF  the  noblest  and  most  indispensable  part  of 
real  study  is  not  hard  study,  but  hard 
thinking,  then  our  Bible-teaching  must  be  of  a 
kind  that  will  never  tend  to  lull,  but  always  to 
stimulate  the  pupil's  own  pondering  and  ques- 
tioning energies.  Here  lie  the  great  danger  and 
small  value  of  the  lecturing  or  discoursing  habit 
in  the  Bible  teacher.  Better  any  ten  sincere 
words  from  any  pupil,  the  result  of  his  own 
thought,  than  a  hundred  from  his  teacher  that 
do  not  excite  the  pupil  to  think  for  himself. 

"  I  know  my  lesson."  How  many  millions  of 
times  has  that  been  said  untruly !  We  know 
our  lesson  not  when  we  have  memorized  its  text 
or  merely  accepted  its  statements  in    passive 


64  THE  BUSY  MAN'S  BIBLE. 

credence,  but  when  we  have  distinguished  in  it 
what  to  us  is  positively  knowable  and  hav6 
made  it  our  own  i)ositive  knowledge;  have 
weighed  what  to  us  is  believable  and  made  it  our 
own  personal  belief;  and  recognising  also  what- 
ever in  it  is  to  us  not  yet  absolutely  knowable  or 
even  fixedly  believable,  but  only  good  to  hope 
for,  have  taken  it  into  our  hopes. 

One  who  knows  a  lesson  thus  can  teach  it; 
and  you  may  know  a  good  Bible  teacher  by  see- 
ing him  often  playing  pupil  to  his  pupils  and 
bidding  them  teach  him.  Thus  is  developed,  in 
both  teacher  and  taught,  the  skill  to  distinguish 
with  a  hale,  sane  readiness  and  self-candor  be- 
tween the  many  good  things  that  some  as  yet 
can  only  hope,  the  fewer  that  may  be  fully  be- 
lieved, and  that  great  few  which  can  be,  and  need 
to  be,  absolutely  known.  A  class  so  taught  will 
not  often  be  found  spending  on  minor  questions 
time  out  of  proportion  to  their  comparative 
values.  I  can  imagine  such  a  class  saying, 
"  With  Paul  we  hope  in  the  resurrection;  with 
David,  the  prophets,  ai)0Stle8  and  martyrs,  we 
believe  in  God;  but  we  Jcnoio — absolutely,  by  our 


THE  BUST  MAN'S  BIBLE.  65 

own  lives,  we  know — that  every  sin  is  so  much 
death.  We  Jcnow  that  Christ's  righteousness, 
holiness  and  unselfish,  yearning  love,  as  far  as 
we  succeed  in  repeating  them  in  our  own  hearts 
and  activities,  are  even  now  and  here  eternal  life 
and  joy,  eternal  in  breadth  whatever  they  may  be 
in  length.  And  we  Jcnow  that  the  better  we  can 
learn  and  apply  these  the  stronger  will  be  our 
real  belief  in  God,  the  surer  our  faith  in  his 
goodness  and  mercy,  and  the  brighter  and  nobler 
our  hope  in  the  resurrection. 


^ 


XII. 

STUDY  THE  PUPIL. 

WE  must  help  our  pupils  to  think  for 
themselves.  Yet  while  we  teach  them 
that  only  by  their  own  thought  and  desire 
they  can  truly  reach  the  great  ultimate  conclu- 
sions necessary  to  the  soul's  salvation,  the 
teacher's  great  office  remains,  to  smooth  the  way 
and  shorten  the  journey  to  those  conclusions. 
On  one  hand  the  skillful  teacher  will — not  min- 
utely, but  largely — accomodate  himself  and  his 
teaching  to  the  natural  qualities  and  tendencies 
of  the  particular  pupil's  mind.  To  emotional 
and  imaginative  temperaments  he  will  ever  be 
holding  forth  that  a  heart  which  ignores  the 
head  is  forgetting  its  marriage  vows;  while  to 
unsusceptible  and  argumentative  natures  he  will 


TEE  BUSY  MAN'S  BIBLE.  67 

keep  it  ever  in  view  that  the  citadel  of  the  soul 
is  not  the  head,  but  the  heart.  Hence  on  the 
other  hand,  whatever  the  temi)erament  with 
which  he  is  dealing  he  will  remember  that  the 
heart  is  the  objective  point,  and  that  be  the  pu- 
pil of  what  sort  he  may,  it  is  a  hundred  times 
easier  to  get  the  essentials  of  Christianity  into 
his  head  by  way  of  his  heart  than  into  his  heart 
by  way  of  his  head. 

The  careful  teacher  will  also  duly  adapt  his 
teaching  to  the  pupil's  earlier  traiuing  and  pre- 
conceptions. Where  he  finds  a  pupil's  notions 
of  God's  nature  and  methods  and  of  man's  du- 
ties and  destiny  poorer  and  lower  than  his  own, 
he  win  begin  there  to  build  better  before  he 
hints  of  destroying  what  has  been  faultily  built. 
Every  soul  is  a  ship  in  a  storm,  and  a  wise  com- 
mander will  slip  no  anchor-chain  because  it  is 
too  weak,  until  a  stronger  has  fully  taken  its 
place  and  made  the  weaker  only  an  encum- 
brance. 


XIII. 

SIMPLIFY. 

BUT  even  while  he  is  doing  this  a  wise 
teacher  will  not  fail  to  teach  also  that  the 
largeness  and  accuracy  of  the  christian's  notions 
of  God  and  duty,  important  as  they  are,  are  not 
the  sheet  anchor  of  his  hope.  That  anchor,  he 
will  teach,  is  a  far  simpler  thing;  it  is  his  heart's 
acceptance  of  God's  mercy,  authority  and  love. 
What  a  parable  was  that  great  storm  a  year  or 
so  ago  in  Apia  bay.  There,  when  every  anchor 
dragged,  the  captain  of  one  ship  the  great 
engine  heart  of  which  was  strong  enough  to 
make  his  purpose  good,  slipped  his  anchors,  and 
as  he  passed  the  helpless  Trenton^  shouted  to  her 
commander,  "lam  going  out  to  sea!'' — went, 
and  rode  out  on  the  open  deep  the  storm  that 


THE  BUSY  MAN'S  BIBLE.  69 

fiUed  the  harbor  with  wrecks.  So  may  the  wise 
Bible  teacher  teach,  that  when  our  best  notions 
of  God  and  duty  fail  us  like  dragging  anchors 
on  a  bad  anchorage,  the  contrite  soul  with  all  its 
doubts  may  stUl  cast  itself  upon  the  boundless 
sea  of  the  Divine  love  and  find  safety  and  peace. 

The  effort  of  the  wise  teacher  will  be  ever  to- 
ward the  completer  simplification  of  God's 
truth  and  salvation's  terms.  He  will  never  lead 
downward  into  the  darkness  of  the  Bible's  ob- 
scurities; he  will  ever  be  leading  upward  into 
the  lights  of  its  great  simplicities.  He  will  never 
treat  a  pupil's  sincere  doubt  with  resentment, 
contempt,  or  any  other  form  of  unkindness;  and 
he  will  treat  every  doubt  as  sincere  until  it  is 
glaringly  proved  not  to  be  so. 

He  will  teach  that  there  are  more  things  in 
the  Bible  that  one  need  not  try  to  rescue  from 
all  doubt  than  most  persons  admit  there  are. 
And  he  will  teach  his  pupils  the  very  best  use  of 
doubts;  which  is,  to  turn  us  ever  back  to  the 
few  great  things  that  cannot  be  doubted,  and  to 
the  priceless  things  which  we  learn  to  believe  by 
wisely  acting  as  if  we  believed   them.     Some 


70  THE  BUST  MAN'S  BIBLE. 

doubts  may  be  even  best  left  unsettled.  Where, 
for  instance,  a  doubt  is  a  mere  hesitation  be- 
tween varying  interpretations  of  a  Scripture 
passage,  he  will  teach  each  pupil  to  hold  fast 
to  whatever  he  finds  good  in  each  and  all  of 
them  and  to  put  aside  without  fear,  as  without 
pride,  whatever  is  not. 


+ 


XIV. 

THE  PUPIL'S  OWN  SAKE. 

LET  us  not  run  into  a  multitude  of  good 
rules.  When  one  asks  for  rules  I  seem  at 
once  to  see  and  hear  a  thousand  of  them  filling 
the  atmosphere  about  the  poor  teacher's  head, 
buzzing  and  threatening,  but  finding  no  central, 
sovereign,  queen-bee  truth  to  swarm  upon,  and 
I  feel  that  there  must  be  some  one  transcendent 
formula  wanting  to  the  art  of  teaching,  which 
no  one  yet  has  found.  I  search  vainly  in 
others'  counsel  and  in  my  own  mind  for  this  un- 
discovered truth,  this  absent  keystone,  and  such 
poor  success  as  I  can  pluck  from  the  thorny 
tangle  of  my  mistakes  and  failures  I  seem  to 
get — as  far  as  method  is  concerned — ^by  be- 
lieving in  the  existence  of  such  a  supreme  prin- 


72  THE  BUST  MAN'S  BIBLE. 

ciple  and  in  still  seeking  though  never  finding  it. 

Principle,  I  say;  not  rule.  Rules  are  risky- 
things,  soon  worn  out,  easily  spoiled,  and,  how- 
ever good,  bad  as  soon  as  they  obscure  our  view 
of  principles.  A  principle,  I  say;  but  just  where 
or  what  it  is  I  cannot  surely  tell.  I  can  only 
suggest  one  or  two  thoughts  more  that  seem  to 
me  to  point  the  direction  which  our  search  for 
this  great  heart-truth  of  the  whole  art  of  Bible- 
teaching  ought  to  take. 

One  of  these  is  the  thought  that  we  should 
teach  always  visibly  and  supremely  in  the 
pupil's  personal  interest;  not  supremely  in  soci- 
ety's, nor  the  Bible's,  nor  the  church's — neither 
our  own  church's  nor  the  church's  universal — 
nor  even  supremely  in  our  Lord  Christ's  inter- 
est, save  as  he  has  made  his  interest  identical 
with  that  of  every  human  souL  If  on  a  certain 
ship  only  one  man  could  be  sent  as  missionary  to 
heathen  lands,  and  two  were  eager  to  go,  and 
each  seemed  as  fit  as  the  other,  and  our  Lord  him- 
self were  bodily  present  to  choose  between  them, 
and  should  ask  each  one  why  he  so  yearned  to 
go,  and  the  first  should  answer,  "For  thy  sake, 


THE  BUSY  MAIL'S  BIBLE.  73 

Lord,"  and  the  second  answer,  "Lord,  for  the 
heathen's  own  sake,"  verily  the  second  would 
be  his  first  choice. 

To  apply  this  principle  successfully,  to  teach 
always  visibly  and  absorbingly  in  the  pupil's 
personal  interest,  there  is  but  one  way.  That  is 
to  love  the  pupil;  not  merely  to  love  his  soul — 
that  phrase  is  too  often  a  cheat  and  a  snare;  but 
to  love  the  whole  pupil's  every  true  interest,  even 
as  Christ  loves  ours.  If  we  cannot  begin  our 
teaching  with  such  love,  if  for  a  time  only  "the 
love  of  Christ  constraineth  us,"  yet  let  that  move 
us  dilligently  to  make  ourselves  love  our  pupils, 
few  or  many,  in  general  and  in  particular,  all 
and  singular.  If  we  can  begin  no  better  we  can 
at  least  act  out  the  love  we  only  wish  we  felt; 
acting  it  out  not  in  mere  manners,  but  in  acta 
and  works  lovingly  and  lovably  performed, 
which  by  impulse  we  would  do  only  for  those 
we  love. 

And  this  sort  of  teaching  need  not  at  aU  take 
the  form  or  spirit  of  any  mischevious  concession 
to  the  pupils'  selfishness.  Let  this  thought  in-  i 
form  it:  That  this  universe  is  a  great  unit.     It  is 


74  THE  BUSY  MAN^8  BIBLE. 

not  a  mere  aggregation,  it  is  a  vast  harmony. 
Whenever,  wherever,  whatever,  in  science,  art, 
history,  letters,  morals,  government  or  handi- 
craft we  set  about  to  teach,  we  ought,  it  seems 
to  me,  to  make  it  plain  in  the  very  start  that 
we  are  about  to  consider  an  integral,  inseparable 
part  of  all  things,  I  fancy  I  could  so  delight  a 
little  child  with  some  pictueresque  account  of 
the  great  world  of  knowledge  to  which  the 
alphabet  is  one  key  that  he  would  not  rest 
until  he  had  learned  how  to  turn  that  key  in  its 
lock. 

I  might  find  much  trouble  to  attract  the  at- 
tention and  interest  of  a  pupil,  young  or  old,  to 
the  matter  I  wish  him  to  consider;  but  keeping 
practically  in  view  myself  this  great  harmonious 
oneness  of  all  things,  I  should  stoop  to  conquer 
and  should  hope  to  succeed  by  first  giving  my 
attention  and  interest  to  any  matter,  tangible  or 
intangible,  in  earth,  air  or  sea,  that  he  might 
wish  to  consider.  Nor  should  I  make  this  a  rule 
merely,  nor  merely  a  resort  in  emergency;  I 
should  hold  it  an  ever  new,  ever  old,  ever  active 
principle   of   relation   and    operation    between 


THE  BUST  MAN'S  BIBLE.  75 

teacher  and  pupil.  To  buy  his  interest  in  my 
themes  with  my  interest  in  his — ^always  ! 

For  surely  the  first  great  step  in  a  teacher's 
work,  every  day,  every  hour,  ought  to  be  to  find 
a  worthy  and  practical  relationship  between  the 
pupil  and  the  thing  to  be  taught.  And  this 
may  always  be  found.  Of  this  great  creation, 
nay  of  such  uncreated  eternal  things  as  absolute 
truth  also, — of  all  this  harmony  of  finites  and 
infinites — every  human  frame  and  intelligence 
is  a  part.  Everything  in  the  great  entire  is 
somehow  each  soul's,  each  body's,  affair.  Let 
us,  then,  labor  ever  to  find  out  with  what 
things  in  this  great  Entire  our  pupil  already 
feels  and  enjoys  his  personal  relationship,  and 
bring  the  things  we  want  to  teach  him  into 
closer  relationship  with  them.  Wherefore  let 
teacher  and  pupil,  like  quartermaster  and 
steersman  standing  at  the  wheel  together,  look 
unceasingly  to  the  practical,  personal  bearing 
and  result  of  each  lesson,  as  to  a  common  guid- 
ing star. 

Men  ask,  shall  we  teach  the  Bible  in  week-day 
school  t    Why  not  lay  the  stress  on  teaching 


76  THE  BUSY  MAK^S  BIBLE. 

religion,  with  or  without  the  Bible?  Religion 
will  still  be  in  its  eternal  youth  when  the  Bible 
has  fulfilled  its  mighty  office  and  passed  away 
from  that  heaven  where  there  is  no  temple.  Ee- 
Ugion  is  not  a  knowledge  of  certain  things;  it  is 
a  state  of  the  heart  in  which  all  knowledge 
should  be  received  and  used.  How  can  any 
good  teacher  help  but  teach  religion  ?  It  is  co- 
extensive with  the  universe.  It  is  not  mere 
ecclesiastical  or  academical  tenets;  it  is  not  any 
part  of  life;  it  is  only  the  whole  science  and  art 
of  life  animated  and  inspired  by  a  universally 
pervasive  and  perfect  philosophy,  the  very 
alphabet  of  all  correct  teaching,  an  alphabet 
whose  Alpha  and  Omega  are  Unselfishness. 

But  unselfishness  is  not  self  annihilation  nor 
any  effort  after  it.  It  is  but  the  subordination 
of  Self  to  its  place  in  the  universal  harmony. 
Its  result  is — what  its  motive  must  never  be  or 
the  result  fails — an  immeasurably  greater  and 
better  aggrandizement  of  self  than  any  self- 
seeking  can  possibly  attain.  True  teaching, 
then,  whether  in  the  Bible  or  not,  can  be  only 
that  sort  which   moves  the  student  to  ask  of 


THE  BUSY  MAN'S  BIBLE.  77 

every  offered  acquisition,  not,  How  can  this 
serve  Self!  but.  What  self-equipment  will  this 
add  for  that  blessed  service  of  the  Universal 
Harmony  which  by  its  nature  tends  to  make 
the  whole  universe  myself  and  saves  me  from 
the  folly  and  ruin  of  trying  to  make  Self  my 
universe. 

With  this  purpose  in  view,  however  we  may 
accomodate  ourselves  to  one  pupil's  shortness  of 
view  or  another's  narrowness  of  interest  we  shall 
still  reflect  somewhat  of  that  Light  which  ever 
kindly  leads  toward  those  great  things  to  the 
understanding  and  acceptance  of  which,  as  we 
have  said,  books  and  scholarship  are  but  ladders 
and  scaffolding,  only  aids,  however  great,  and 
not  essentials. 


^ 


w 


XV. 

THE  LIVING  EPISTLE. 

E  have  said  that  to  teach  the  Bible  rightly 
we  need,  not  to  teach  the  Bible,  but  to 
use  it  to  teach  something  yet  larger  and  greater 
than  even  the  Bible  is ;  that  is,  Christianity  as 
our  regular  daily  business  calling.  Boys  on  a 
training  ship  are  not  well  taught  the  compass 
untU  the  compass  is  put  into  practical  use  to 
teach  them  how  to  steer  a  ship. 

So,  Bible  teachers,  well  nigh  aU  the  quality  of 
our  success  depends  on  how,  and  how  much, 
we  really  make  the  Bible  the  compass  of  our  life's 
daily  voyage,  and  how,  and  how  much,  we  let 
our  pupils  find  that  out.  All  unconfessed, — 
even  to  themselves  if  they  are  adults, — that  is 
what  they  are  studying,  just  in  proportion  as 


THE  BUST  MAN'S  BIBLE.  79 

their  minds  are  bright  and  their  characters  above 
the  vice  of  letting  themselves  be  book-built. 
You — you — behind  your  Bible — no  matter  how 
constantly  you  hold  it  up  between  you  and  your 
pupils — ^you — ^however  insignificant  you  try  to 
fency  yourself — you  first,  and  the  Bible  only 
afterward  and  secondarily,  are  what  they  are 
studying.  You  are  the  living  epistle  read  of 
them  all.  Wherefore  modestly,  tactfully,  con- 
stantly, candidly,  show  them  that  you  recognize 
and  accept  this  inevitable  scrutiny  ;  seek  to  mul- 
tiply your  personal  relations  and  experiences 
with  them  ;  and,  teaching  always  that  the  Bible 
is  not  the  daily  battle  of  life,  but  only  the  bat- 
tle-standard, study  with  them  the  whole  practi- 
cal art,  skill  and  power  of  bearing  that  standard 
daily  and  hourly  in  the  fore  front. 

But  you  are  a  busy  man  or  woman  t  So  much 
the  better ;  you  are  in  practice  ;  you  have  so 
many  daily  practical  experiences  of  life  by  which 
to  test  the  moral  recipes  of  the  Bible. 

But  your  calling,  you  insist,  is  not  of  a  religious 
character.  Then  there  is  something  wrong  with 
it ;  or,  more  likely,  only  with  you.     Can  it  be 


80  THE  BUSY  MAJ^'S  BIBLE. 

that  you  are  but  an  amateur  christian  T  I  have 
seen  the  Bible  taught  by  such ;  they  taught 
nothing,  at  best,  but  the  Bible,  even  when  they 
taught  learnedly  ;  not  the  things  to  which  the 
Bible  can  only  light  the  way.  To  teach  the 
Bible  rightly,  so  that  practical  Christianity  shall 
be  the  result,  requires  not  biblical  lore,  or  much 
leisure  for  preparation,  or  exceptional  saintli- 
ness  ;  but  that  the  teacher  shall  have  gone,  or  is 
at  least  trying  to  go,  professionally  into  the  busi- 
ness of  Christ.  But  the  business  of  Christ  em- 
braces every  business ;  every  human  pursuit 
truly  tending  to  advance,  not  retard,  the  world's 
betterment.  Going  into  Christianity  profession- 
ally does  not  necessarily  change  our  visible  call- 
ing, but  only  its  fundamental  purposes,  the 
Master  for  whom  it  is  performed,  and  the  ends 
to  which  its  product  is  really  and  unreservedly 
dedicated.  A  man  may  be  a  Eight  Eeverend 
missionary  and  not  be  a  professional  Christian. 
Another  may  be  a  professional  Christian  yet  only 
saw  logs  or  sell  toys  if  that  is  the  best  he  can  do 
to  help  the  world  toward  the  likeness  of  God. 
"  Grod  weigheth  more  with  how  much  love  a 


THE  BUST  MAW'S  BIBLE,  81 

man  worketh  than  how  much  he  doeth.  He 
doeth  much  that  loveth  much.  He  doeth  much 
that  doeth  a  thing  welL"  So,  though  you  but 
hew  wood  and  draw  water  with  the  spread  of 
Christianity  for  your  labor's  determined  end  and 
watching  with  humble  eagerness  for  promotion 
along  that  line,  you  are  already,  here  and  now, 
a  king  and  priest  unto  God.  You  are  showing 
the  best  part  of  how  to  teach  the  Bible.  You 
have  found  the  true  way  of  life  in  the  true  way 
to  live.  Take  your  Bible,  busy  Christian  and, 
with  it,  teach  that.  You  may  be  no  more  than 
a  good  fisherman,  but  ''Thou  shalt  catch  men." 


^ 


HCSB  LIBRARY 


-**v 


-  as V  j.-^lir^^iiiJfeSJSKK^'  ii 


